Pages

Monday, October 5, 2015

A visit to Mt. Hood Kiwanis Camp, part 2

Our Social Media Manager visited camp this last summer to meet campers and counselors, take photos, and share the experience with you. Read part 1 here.

After we left the pool and campsite, faculty member Carolyn Bradley continued to show me the camp. I'm in the presence of an expert; it's Carolyn's 17th year supervising counselors here. "I love it," she says of her work and the camp.

We start with the sites where outdoor activities take place. Below is a tree where campers are hoisted up into the air with a harness, their weight carried by a row of campers and counselors down below. It's a fun activity for the person being lifted and a great team-building exercise for those still on the ground.

A camper is hoisted into the air during one of the many outdoor activities available at camp.

We then headed up a hill to visit the horses. There are four full-sized horses, and the campers get to take turns riding them around a fence-enclosed area.

The campers get to ride horses around this fence-enclosed area.

There's also a miniature horse named Disco, a newer addition to the equine experience at Kiwanis Camp. Disco came up to us immediately as we approached, calmly letting me take photos and then munching on weeds as Carolyn showed me around.

Disco, the small horse above, is for interacting with socially rather than riding.

By then it was time for the fishing activity to start, so we headed back down to the area around Fanning Hall and to the pond. It's a catch-and-release affair, with no fish permanently harmed. Carolyn told me of an elusive larger fish that everyone likes to catch, and it became easy to see how a culture and a feeling of community build up here in only two-week sessions.

A pond where campers and counselors practice catch-and-release fishing.

Our final stop was the art building, a cozy space that was alive with the chatter of campers and counselors as they worked on their arts and crafts. There were quieter corners of the room as well, and a few of the more shy camper-counselor pairs chose to do their work on some of the smaller tables around the edges.

The arts and crafts room was buzzing with activity when we arrived.

Even in busier environments there are places where campers and counselors can step out of the action for a moment, like this quieter corner in the art building.

The campers can work on personal projects here, but when we arrived they had a group project: working to complete small boats for a nighttime ceremony that occurs at camp. Here are some completed boats, with wishes of all kinds written on the sides, such as "I want to meet good new friends next year too!" and "I want to come back soon to camp," and "We wish to come back next, & get into another group, & make new friends but keep the old & feel good next year."

One of the projects that can be created during the art activity is a boat like the one above, which contains wishes (written on small pieces of paper) that the campers and counselors have made.

Our tour was at an end after that, and as we stepped outside I asked Carolyn for some parting thoughts on what she likes best about this capstone. "You know, there's a lot of publicity and a lot of sharing about how valuable this camp is for campers, and how much they get out of it," she tells me, "But a lot of people don't realize that the counselors get a lot out of it too. They are learning a lot about themselves, they're growing, and they're becoming people who know more about someone with a disability and are more comfortable around people with a disability. And that's gonna continue to affect them throughout their life, whether it be with their family or their community or in the workplace. They're forever changed."